Academic Planner (Portal)

This document is written for use by parents and students. Districts can choose to provide this information to their parents and students or use it as a guide for creating district-owned documentation.

The Academic Planner displays the student's assigned Academic Program and the courses the student has planned to take in each school year (represented by grade level). Counselors have a similar view to this that allows them to see your chosen courses and make modifications, if necessary. Based on the assigned Academic Program, students must meet credit requirements, course requirements, test requirements and GPA requirements. The goal is to meet each requirement for each grade level.

Academic Planner

Select an Academic Program

When first accessing the Academic Planner, select and/or verify an Academic Plan from the dropdown list. Also select the desired Post Grad Location (where you are going to attend college) and your Post Grad Plans. Click the Next button when finished.

Academic Plan Selection

Add Courses from the Course Catalog

Use the Course Catalog to locate courses that would be of interest to you. If you know the name of the course, enter that name in the field, or a partial name. Matching results display. When a course is chosen, a description displays, providing more information about the curriculum of the course, any planning rules set for the course, total number of credits given, course fees (if any), and an option to add that course to the plan.

Courses can only be added for grade levels that have related credit requirements.

Courses can only be added if you/your student has not previously taken the course.

Courses can only be added if it is not currently on the plan.

If your counselor or administrator has created course plan templates, some courses may already be on your course plan.

Course Catalog Searching

If this is the course you'd like to take, click the Add to Grade button. Courses can be added to any future grade level. This places the course on your plan in the indicated grade level for that credit type.

Adding a Course from the Course Catalog Search

Add Courses

Click in the text box below the number of credits for a certain grade level. Courses meeting that credit type display for selection.

Choose the desired course(s). When they are added, they display and the number of credits is updated. The credits assigned to a course appear after the course name.

Add enough credits for future years as needed. When the student has met the number of requirements, the alert that displays for each credit type stating not enough credits are selected disappears.

Repeat these steps for each credit type. At the end of the process, you should have a clear idea of what courses he will be taking in each grade level.

Click the Save icon when finished.

Adding Courses

Add Alternate Courses to the Plan

Adding alternate courses is done the same way as entering other courses. Enter alternative courses to take in the event the planned courses cannot be scheduled. Alternate courses are placed on the schedule based on the order assigned to the alternate courses.

Use the arrows to move the courses into the desired order. In the example below, if an alternate course is going to be placed, the Wizard attempts to place the course first in the list (3046 AP Environmental Science) before placing the second course in the list (9008 Sports & Entertainment Market).

Alternate Course Planning

Note the following:

Alternate courses can only be planned for future years. A current year freshman student can only plan alternates for the sophomore, junior and senior years.

If a course is already planned as a desired course, it cannot be planned as an alternate in the same year it is planned. But it can be added as an alternate in a different year. A student could plan to take a World Affairs course in the junior year, but could add it as an alternate in the sophomore year.

Courses planned as alternates do not satisfy planning rules. If an alternate course is planned and it violates a planning rule, the course is included in the list of alerts.

Counselors cannot lock or unlock alternate courses.

Courses that are part of a compound requirement display in bold.

Print Course Plan Report

To print a copy of your course plan, click the Course Plan Report button at the top of the Academic Planner. A PDF view of your course plan displays, including Alternate Course selections.Only saved entries on the course plan are printed. If you added a course but did not save, and clicked print, the new course you added is not included in the print.

Course Plan Report

Things to Know About the Academic Planner

Click here to expand...

Academic Plan Alerts and Warnings

Each time a change is made to the Academic Plan, all rules and requirements are reevaluated and updated alerts and messages display. The plan does not need to be saved to show these alerts. When the alerts have been satisfied, they will be removed.

School administrators set certain display options on the portal. For the Academic Planner, one of those options is to enforce all rules. When this is enabled, the academic plan cannot be saved unless all rules and requirements are satisfied.

Warnings

Warnings display in black font when there is a failure to meet a Credit Requirement or a Course or Compound Requirement. A compound requirement includes both a course and a test requirement.

Plans can still be saved when warnings exist.

Alerts and Errors

Students who have an Academic Plan that has an error cannot save changes they've made to their course plan from the Portal.

Alerts display when:

A grade does not have enough credits planned.

A credit type does not have enough credits planned.

Depending on your school's selection of Portal options, an academic plan can only be saved if the selected courses meet all requirements and planning rules. It may be possible to save the selected courses without meeting all requirements, but all planning rules must still be met.

Warning messages from failed requirements and failed planning rules display, explaining the issues that need to be corrected.

Warnings and Alerts

Course Display

A course is available for selection when the course is marked as active. Courses that appear in the dropdown lists are pulled from the student's most future enrollment calendar, based on the primary enrollment (partial or special education enrollments are not used).

Courses that are set to be recommended from a course requirement display in bold text.

Courses that have been completed (have been posted to the transcript) and in-progress courses (student is currently scheduled into) display as such when hovering over the course.

Courses that can be taken multiple times display for each grade level. Students can select these courses in any grade level.

Courses that have planning rules associated with them that have not been satisfied display in gray text when choosing courses in the dropdown list when choosing courses.

Courses that have a planning rule of Parent of/Child of display both the parent course and the child courses.

The correct credit value for each course (parent and child) displays.

The correct total value per credit type for each course (parent and child) displays.

The correct total value per grade level displays for each course (parent and child).

When a parent course is removed from the course plan, the child courses are also removed.

A child course with a different credit type displays in the correct credit type frame and displays the correct credit amount. All child courses display as locked.

When selecting a course with a Parent of rule, and the child course has a different credit type, the credit type displays after each course to identity which credit type they are associated.

Planned courses that do not meet planning rules assigned on the course display as a planning rule violation.

If a student has not taken or planned a required course tied to a course requirement, an alert displays.

Credits Earned, Credits In-Progress

Repeating Course

Planning Rule Violation

Course Requirement Violation

Credit Display

Existing credits applied to high school courses (those from middle school or transferred credit) display in the credit type section to which they apply. Any credit assigned to the credit type that is considered overflow displays as well.

Credit Overflow Assigned

Planning Rules

Principals, counselors and other staff at the school work together to maintain the courses available for students. As part of this setup, they may have added certain rules that determine when students can plan a course for a certain year. These rules are visible when selecting courses from the Course Catalog (see Image 3) and when saving the Academic Planner.

Course Planning Rules Violation

Because of these rules, the courses in the Academic Planner may display differently. The following table provides details on these rules.

Planning Rule

Course Display

Catalog Search Display

Alerts, Warnings and Errors

Prerequisite

A course displays in red when a student selects a course that has a prerequisite rule but has not previously taken that prerequisite course or has not planned the prerequisite course.

If the prerequisite was met, the course cannot be selected for the same year in which the prerequisite course was taken. But the course can be selected in other years.

Both courses remain in the course catalog search results.

If the prerequisite was not met, the course cannot be selected and all buttons display in gray (inactive).

If a course is missing its prerequisite(s) on the course plan, the user receive an error when attempting to save.

If a student takes the Prerequisite course(s) but does not meet or exceed the credit value to meet the requirement, an alert displays.

If a student takes the Prerequisite course(s) but does not meet or exceed the Min GPA Value to meet the requirement, an alert displays.

Equivalent

Courses display in red if the user selects more than one course listed as an equivalent.

A student can only take one course in the equivalent rule.

If the course and one of its equivalents has already been taken or planned, the course cannot be selected.

N/A

Concurrent

Courses display in red if the student hasn't selected a course that meets the concurrent rule.

If a concurrent course is searched but its counterpart has not been requested, the course can be selected.

If a concurrent course is searched and its counterpart has been requested, the course can be selected.

If both courses have not been selected in the same year, an alert message displays.

If only one of the courses has been selected, an alert message displays.

Failure to meet or exceed the credit minimum requirement triggers an Alert message.

Prerequisite and Concurrent

A course that is selected on the student's course plan and has a prerequisite or concurrent rule displays in RED on a students course plan screen if they haven't taken or planned to take the course(s) that meet the prerequisite or concurrent rule.

If a prerequisite or concurrent course is not in the course plan, user can search and select the course.

If a prerequisite or concurrent course is in the course plan, any remaining prerequisite or concurrent course can be added in any year in the course plan.

An alert message displays if a course is selected and the user has not selected the other course in a previous year or in the same school year.

Failure to meet the minimum credit requirement triggers an alert message. The student must meet or exceed this credit value on their transcript to meet the requirement.

Failure to meet or exceed the minimum GPA requirement triggers an alert message. The student must meet or exceed this value to be considered as on-track.

Parent Of

Only the Parent Course is available for selection in the Course Plan. The Parent Course credit is a total of all the courses included in the parent/child setup.

If there is credit overflow, it displays the total amount of credits as a sum of the parent child courses.

If the parent course is already on the course plan, it displays in gray.

N/A

Child Of

Courses marked as Child Of are not available for selection in the Course Plan.

N/A

N/A

Parent and Guardian Approval

When you are finished building your academic plan, have your parents/guardians review it by having them log into the Portal with their own username and password and mark the Approved by parent/legal guardian checkbox.

Parent/Guardian Approval

System Display Options and Academic Planner Abilities

Schools have the ability to choose what displays in the portal. These choices affect the functionality of the options that display for parents and students in the Portal. Depending on the options chosen, the student and parent may not be able to do all expected things. See the following table for what happens when these options are selected.

Selected Portal Display Options

Portal Academic Progress Behavior

Student without an Academic Plan

Academic Planner

Require Approved by parent/legal guardian

Display Course Fees

Allow portal users to change program

Allow students to change course plans

Allow parents to change course plan

Student can select an Academic Plan

Student can add and remove courses from course plan and SAVE.

Student can select a different Academic Plan.

Academic Planner

Allow students to change course plans

Student can select an Academic Plan.

Student can add and remove courses from course plan and SAVE.

Student cannot select a different Academic Plan. All other programs are grayed out (inactive).

Academic Planner

Student can select an Academic Plan.

Student cannot add or remove any course that have been saved to the course plan.

Students with an Academic Plan

Academic Planner

Allow portal users to change program

Allow students to change course plans

Student can select a different Academic Plan.

Student can add and remove courses from course plan and SAVE.

Academic Planner

Allow students to change course plans

Student cannot select a different Academic Plan. All other programs will be grayed out (inactive).

Student add and remove courses from course plan and SAVE.

Academic Planner

Student cannot select an Academic Plan. All other programs will be grayed out (inactive).

Student cannot add or remove any course that have been saved to the course plan.

Parent of a Student without Academic Plan

Academic Planner

Require Approved by parent/legal guardian

Display Course Fees

Allow portal users to change program

Allow students to change course plans

Allow parents to change course plans

Parent can select an Academic Plan.

Parent can add and remove courses from course plan and SAVE.

Parent can select a different Academic Plan.

Academic Planner

Allow Parent to change course plans

Parent can select an Academic Plan.

Parent can add and remove courses from course plan and SAVE.

Parent cannot select a different Academic Plan. All other programs will be grayed out (inactive).

Academic Planner

Parent can select an Academic Plan.

Parent cannot add or remove any course that have been saved to the course plan.

Parent of a Student with an Academic Plan

Academic Planner

Allow portal users to change program

Allow Parent to change course plans

Parent can select a different Academic Plan.

Parent can add and remove courses from course plan and SAVE.

Academic Planner

Allow Parent to change course plans

Parent cannot select a different Academic Plan. All other programs will be grayed out (inactive).

Parent can add and remove courses from course plan and SAVE.

Parent can approve a child's plan regardless of whether this setting is turned on or off

Academic Planner

Parent cannot select an Academic Plan. All other programs will be grayed out (inactive).

Parent cannot add or remove any course that have been saved to the course plan.